Feb 17 Progressive Media: Christina Romer edition

Sam Stein in the Huffington Post summarizing a new book by Noam Scheiber of the New Republic:

Chief among the examples of the administration's failures is the
stimulus itself. When Summers made the final presentation to the
president's then-chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Scheiber writes, "It
reflected what he deemed the best course that was politically feasible
... Yet because Emanuel and the president assumed Summers was largely
giving them [economic advice], they believed they were closer to the
ideal than they actually were." (quoted by Delong so I do not have to link to sleazy Huffington Post).

According to Stein, according to Scheiber, Summers overruled the advice of Presidential adviser Christina Romer. For a different perspective, however, we could look at what, um, Christina Romer actually says:

In retrospect, it would have been good if the Recovery Act had been even
larger. But as it was, it was the largest countercyclical fiscal
stimulus in American history – not just in dollar terms, but relative to
the size of the economy[ my bold, R] As we've gotten more evidence about how it has
worked, it is clear that it was immensely helpful. The Recovery Act is
part of the reason why, despite the terrible shocks that hit the
American economy in 2008, this recession, as bad as it was, wasn't a
second Great Depression. The policy response was much more effective and
much more aggressive than it was in the early thirties.

What, even more aggressive than what the sainted FDR did? To make matters more pathetic, Stein writes:

Scheiber writes…. [W]hen the final document was
ultimately laid out for the president, even the $1.2 trillion figure
wasn't included. Summers thought it was still politically impractical.

Sadly for these fake journalists, the actual memo itself has leaked , and was published by a real journalist in the New Yorker, a it's quite a sensible document, but does include a list of recommendations from other sources including this line

Robert Reich believes it should be $1.2 trillion over two years, but also indicated it couldbe larger.

And it's worth noting that these people who are still whining about the size of the stimulus somehow neglect to explain how a bill that passed by ONE VOTE could have been made larger and still passed. Because none of these people care about reality.